How a best-selling wife and husband enchant readers in the anthology ‘Bizarre Romance’

When it comes to using creative frameworks, the “Bizarre Romance” authors also thought in terms of music — specifically, the structure of an album.

The anthology’s 13 chapters, which are each very distinct in their visual styles, all “concern themes that I’ve been interested in all my life: love and loss, the ordinary and the fantastic, the relationship between art and daily life,” Niffenegger says. “When we collected them and began to think about how to shape them into a book, we started talking about albums and mix tapes, and how it would be great if each story had art that exactly suited it, like the instrumentation of a song, instead of trying to come up with one style that straitjacketed them all into conformity.

“I see one thing — a book — that’s bursting with ideas and styles and energy,” she says, “and a few themes that hold it all together.”

“Yes, it’s like a record album of songs. It’s as though we said, ‘Let’s go into the studio and lay down a few tracks’ or ‘bring along any stories you’ve got and we’ll make some comics,’ “ says Campbell, picking up the theme. “There’s an element of enjoying that for its own sake instead of having a big sensational revelation, like ‘My Granddad Was Jack the Ripper’ — a problem that bedevils ‘serious comics’ these days.